Ahoy...That is All

NPR has an interesting piece on the history of the word "hello" and the evolution of phone greetings and sign-offs.  It seems that hello is a new word and wasn't used as a greeting until the telephone was invented.  Edison favored hello while Alexander Graham Bell thought ahoy was better.  The world's first phone book, published in New Haven in 1878, instructed it's users to sign-off with a crisp "that is all."  I like that.  You can read it all here, and see how Montgomery Burns answers the phone.